The home of overground travel

April 6, 2010

I fall out of the taxi at another service station, blear-eyed and part hysterical. In the shop there’s a plastic duck for sale, which lays plastic eggs. “Happy Duck” the packaging pleads, “Lay An Egg”. I haven’t slept for a long time. * * * The king of Jordan must spend a lot of his […]

April 6, 2010

Bellies full of foul and hummous, we decide to climb the hill. Amman seethes with morning traffic, and I have a strong desire to escape it. Having spent the last long while on transport and in transport hubs, I feel as if the world is choked by cars. Their racket is the soundtrack to the […]

April 6, 2010

We cast across the water to Aqaba- it takes a brief hour, sitting among the many pilgrims on their way to Mecca (the border with Saudi Arabia is close) and talking with new friends, a French-Algerian and a British-Moroccan girl who are Muslim and forward-minded. In Aqaba, we hug farewell and climb into a minibus […]

April 5, 2010

Billy goes down to the port first thing, to check which o’ clock the boat’s decided to leave. The moustaches shrug and say Ten o’ clock two o’ clock … which is a whole new time. We take our time having breakfast at the wrestling cafe, and sit with our bags, waiting for the crowd […]

April 4, 2010

The boat has gone. We stand in the dust-blown port, the sun settling behind the biblical desert mountains, and wonder what to do. Questions first- we ask the moustache’d men when the next boat is, and they tell us No Problem, tomorrow morning, seven o’ clock. Well, maybe nine o’ clock. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock. […]

April 4, 2010

From Eilat to the Egyptian border in another bus, this time with a group of 16 Afrikaaners on a year-long world tour. They’re freckled and burned, talking in Dutch and thick English. Billy and I make sure we get off the bus before them- we need to do the passport process as quickly as possible […]

April 4, 2010

We leave the checkpoint behind us, and I’m still hot-eared with frustration and anger at the experience. I imagine the rage that cattle-chute creates in people who must shuffle through it every day. Back into Israel, to hustle onto a bus in Jerusalem. It’s packed with soldiers of all colours, grey blue green, and once […]

April 4, 2010

We leave our friend’s house at 7am. Ramallah is alive with the beginning of the day: school children meet their friends for the walk to school; shopkeepers hang their stock from awnings; coffee sellers yell Coffee to passing workers. Our minibus fills quickly and we pull away on the road to Jerusalem. It’s a short […]

April 4, 2010

“One day I will put a piece of this wall on the shelf in my living room” -Graffiti on the Wall. We’re in Ayda, a refugee camp in Bethlehem, and none of us is saying a word. We’re just looking: looking at the Wall in front of us, huge and grey, covered in graffiti that […]

April 3, 2010

We spent 3 nights in Bethlehem and Ramallah, and performed 2 Rebel Cell shows. We met so many extraordinary people and took on board so many stories that I’m taking my time writing about it all. I promise I’ll fill in the gap here very soon (I”ve got a 24 hour bus journey coming up […]